Democrats cackling for joy after DNC

By Mike Rosen

I’ll confess I didn’t watch the speechifying at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), it was excruciating enough just to read about it and watch video clips the next day. One frequent target was the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” a 900-page guidebook prepared by conservative policy wonks offering a thousand administrative and legislative recommendations across broad areas for the incoming Trump administration. Founded a half-century ago, Heritage is the nation’s preeminent, respectable, conservative (not right-wing) think tank advocating free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values and a strong national defense. In Washington, it’s the counterpart to the respectable left-leaning Brookings Institution.

Project 2025 is actually the tenth edition of Heritage’s “Mandate for Leadership,” first prepared for the incoming Reagan administration in 1981 and reworked every four years for others. It’s like an Amazon catalog from which presidents pick and choose policies and personnel they like, rejecting those they don’t. There’s nothing sinister about it. Democrats follow a similar process through their think tanks. A Progressive Democrat may rely on Karl Marx’s “Communist Manifesto.”

Jared Polis exploited his turn in the spotlight of the DNC podium mostly to show his face and advance his presidential ambitions for 2028. But requiring a different reason to be there, he hopped on the anti-Project 2025 bandwagon, branding it a “dangerous” blueprint to take away Americans’ right to “family planning.” (That’s the clever euphemism Democrats’ substitute for “abortion.”) Jared demonstrated his considerable arm strength by impressively hoisting that hefty book to eye level and proceeded to cherry pick and distort what he thought were its worst suggestions on abortion. But this whole charade was irrelevant. None of those suggestions are in the GOP platform and Trump has ignored them. His clear, oft-stated position is that laws on this highly divisive issue should be decided through the democratic process in the representative governments of each individual state in accordance with their respective values.

Lacking a coherent response, Kamala, in her inimitable style, simply cackled, “They’re out of their minds,” which wasn’t a precise rebuttal. In overturning Roe, SCOTUS rightly ruled that the Constitution confers no right to abortion and returned the matter to the states where it had been before, as it should be in our constitutional republic. Kamala’s plan is to override the states and pass a federal law legalizing abortion right up to the moment of birth and even after it. We’ll see if Congress goes along.

Kamala has this embarrassing cackle which may be an uncontrollable nervous habit or is contrived for no good reason when something isn’t funny, or at inappropriate times, or when stumped for an answer to a pointed question. Democrat strategists have converted this problem into a shrewd campaign slogan, which Bill Clinton showcased in his DNC speech proclaiming, “We need the president of joy.” Other speakers echoed it. “Joy, joy, joy!” Sure, joy is vague and meaningless in the realm of public policy but it sounds good. Who would vote against joy? And cackling must be the highest form of joy.

Clinton also scored with a clever zinger that brought raucous cheers from the hall, “Let’s cut to the chase: I am too old to guild the lily. Two days ago, I turned 78, the oldest man in my family for generations, and the only point of vanity I want to assert is I’m still younger than Donald Trump.”

It makes a good point and it’s funny. But it reeks of irony and hypocrisy, lost on his audience. It would have been an even better zinger directed by Clinton at Joe Biden who’d have been there as the DNC’s nominee that evening had the Democrat high-command extraction team not dragged him off the ballot at the eleventh hour. But then, it wouldn’t have gotten any laughs.

In her acceptance speech Thursday night, Kamala called for “a new way forward.” That was a weird statement, inadvertently suggesting that she and Biden, as the incumbent administration, were failures. But I agree. The country surely needs a new way forward from the Biden-Harris incompetence, fiscal irresponsibility and progressive dogma.

Convention exuberance for both parties fades quickly. Trump’s pluses and minuses are well known but his tenure as president was mostly successful. Kamala is an empty pants suit who was controlled by her handlers in California throughout her career as a prosecutor, attorney general, and senator. She was worthless as vice president. Like Biden, she can only speak coherently from a prepared speech on a teleprompter. If she’s left to her own wits in challenging interviews or debates she falters. As the Democrat nominee, she’s promising wage and price controls and massive tax increases that would wreck the economy, along with an onslaught of budget-busting government giveaways that would add trillions to the already crushing national debt. This, to use her own words, is “losing your mind!”

Trump doesn’t need a teleprompter and can’t be handled by anyone. Yeah, he’s rash, he exaggerates, he’s resistant to wise advice, and vulnerable to self-destruction. But he’s shown he can lead, govern under pressure, and isn’t a progressive socialist.

Partisan and candidate core-voters are already committed. The election will turn on a relatively small number of swing voters in just a few states. They may not love Trump but let’s hope they have the good sense to reject Kamala Harris.